Avast Acquires CCleaner Developer Piriform

Antivirus firm Avast announced on Wednesday the acquisition of Piriform, a London, UK-based company that develops the popular cleaning and optimization tool CCleaner.

While the Piriform staff will join Avast’s consumer business unit, the antivirus company wants to keep Piriform products separate from its current system optimization offering, which includes Avast Cleanup and AVG TuneUp. Avast acquired AVG last year.

The Piriform acquisition will broaden Avast’s presence in London and the companies say they will combine their expertise to deliver even better products.

CCleaner is used by more than 130 million people worldwide, including 15 million Android device users. Avast CEO Vince Steckler believes the CCleaner brand fits his company very well as they both provide high-quality free products.

Steckler also pointed out that both Avast and Piriform have strong and loyal communities whose members provide product feedback and help each other.

“I’ve seen Piriform grow from a bedroom-based hobby to a real business with billions of downloads, millions of users and a worldwide fan base. Our objective, which is to create world-class software tools that fix real world problems, has made the business what it is today,” said Lindsey Whelan, CEO of Piriform.

“We’re pleased to become part of a company which shares this objective because it means together, we can combine our expertise to deliver even better software to the people that matter most: our users,” Whelan added.

Eduard Kovacs is an international correspondent for SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.